This Land is Our Land

THIS LAND IS OUR LAND Corpus Christi native gives powerful insight into the lives of 10 first-generation immigrants.

By: JACQUELINE GONZALEZ / Photos by: TWINS MEDIA

ONE OF THE MOST difficult aspects of writing is turning your thoughts into words that express the feelings you wish to convey, but Corpus Christi native, Saherish Surani, brings forth tales of woe, despair and hope in her debut novel, The Stories of U.S. The novel presents a compilation of experiences of 10 undocumented and first-generation immigrants who are living in the United States today.

Surani, 20, is the daughter of Pakistani immigrants who graduated from Veteran’s Memorial High School. She is currently in her third year at Tufts University in Massachusetts, where she studies the intersections of political science, psychology and public health.

What began as a passion project to understand the stories of immigrant families soon became a project to bring forth stories that may otherwise have fallen by the wayside, considering the current political climate. While the immigration crisis is political, it is more a humanitarian crisis at its core, and she knew that she was the voice from which these stories needed to be heard.

She submitted a book proposal for New Degree Press in winter 2018. When it was approved, she was put in contact with several immigrants to interview, with the help of family and friends. She conducted a series of extensive interviews with 36 people over the course of a year, which included late-night FaceTime sessions and phone calls at odd times of the day and night, to accommodate their schedules and different time zones.

The book opens with a note recalling the time in summer 2018, when she was in a car with her parent and got pulled over by a police officer because her headlights were off. Luckily, since she had no prior offenses, she was let go with a warning. Surani pondered the many possibilities that could have gone wrong if she were less privileged and realized that this routine traffic stop could

have ended in someone’s deportation.

“There’s a big stigma that undocumented immigrants only come from Mexico and through the southern borders,” Surani says. So, while conducting these interviews, she aimed for diversity of country of origin, socioeconomic class and age. Some of the stories captured in the novel include those of Donovan and Paola, elderly Guatemalan siblings; Emily, a middle-school-aged child; and Sahara, a South African college student. Surani’s goal for the novel is to illustrate the similarities in one another, regardless of how different we may seem. “If the stories make readers feel something,” she says, “that’s the first step to acknowledging cultural shifts in the United States.” In today’s digital age, it is easy to get caught up in the headlines and not realize that the people we hear about in the news are real. The Stories of U.S. gives an intimate look into the lives of 10 people and will hopefully remind everyone that we are all human.

Surani’s impressive debut as an author isn’t her first philanthropic rodeo. In addition to writing this novel, she is also co-founder of Project iConquer, a nonprofit project geared toward raising awareness about diabetes and childhood obesity in children ages 3-7. “We figured that 7-yearold children have already developed bad eating habits, so we wanted to reach them at a younger age, so they aren’t changing their habits, but instead, creating new healthy habits.”

Surani and her sisters were inspired to

Emily, a Chinese immigrant – but more importantly, a middleschooler – encountered a terrifying experience when an immigration officer came to her front door looking for her father, who is undocumented. Emily lied to protect her father by saying he was out running errands, although he was simply hiding in a closet. As Americans, we take our privileges for granted, because Emily not only had immigration to contend with, she also had normal middle school problems to worry about – like her upcoming geometry test.

You can find your copy of The Stories of U.S. on Amazon.com. For more information on author Saherish Surani, visit saherishsurani.com.

make a change after reading the Caller-Times headline touting Corpus Christi as the fattest city in America. Realizing the correlation between Type 2 diabetes and children, the Surani sisters set forth to do research, write grants, obtain funding and writing curriculum to create an interactive program that far surpassed the usual handing out of pamphlets and hoping for the best.

Their efforts paid off, because Project iConquer is now a program featured in schools where students learn about diabetes, healthy living and eating habits, and stay physically and mentally fit through educational movies, songs, puppet shows and Zumba dances. The group also planned a benefit golf tournament and a 5k walk with the It’s Your Life Foundation to support the mission of Project iConquer. Surani also spent time in Muizenberg, South Africa, where she worked on the Day Zero water crisis. Most of the townships lacked plumbing and lived in shack-style housing, such as the town of Capricorn, where Surani worked. The homes were made of leftover materials that were susceptible to rain, wind and fire, and there was no water plumbing, so when the wells would dry out, there was no water to replenish. The people of Capricorn were going on several months without water, so together with the local council, Surani helped women and children to determine nearby locations to get water and how to conserve it.

Surani has a heart larger than life, and although there are many things she’d like to accomplish, for now, she wants to focus on promoting The Stories of U.S. and getting more of the stories out to educate the public on the reality and struggles of immigration. She also has ambitions to pursue a master’s degree in public health and possibly enroll in law school. Whichever avenue she wishes to pursue, she will put her heart and soul into it and achieve great things!